Want To Ensure Your Wife Or Mother Gets Her Share Of Rest? Then You Need To #ShareTheWorkDaily

Posted: November 24, 2016

‘Letting’ her take rest on a Sunday is not enough. Housework, is, after all, everyone’s responsibility. #ShareTheWorkDaily

A popular channel came up with a hashtag, #SundayIsHerHoliday. At first, I thought it was for the househelp and I was about to express “How kind!” To my utter horror, though, the video depicted that those sentiments were for the ‘Mom’ – our Overburdened Homemaker who should be given a rest!

Indeed!

I wondered at the alacrity and giggled a bit at the patronising largesse.

My query here: “Can I eat on a Sunday and carry on for the rest of the week?” “Can we sleep on a Sunday and not sleep the other six days?” So how can a single day’s ‘rest’ deal with the fatigue one accrues for six days?

For the oh-so-considerate-clan, I would like to put forward another hashtag #ShareTheWorkDaily.

Yes, daily! Why not create a generation who would not add to the overburdening of chores for the Mommy?

WE OVERBURDEN? WE the kind lot? I can feel the sneers but hang on and check how you can ease her life daily, so that she feels valued and not someone in need of a ‘compulsory weekly off’

Ever wondered why she is so flustered? Imagine the following scenarios-

Scene 1

She enters the bathroom after all have left for work or school. The bathroom is a mass of toothbrushes dangling, toothpaste, soaps, shampoo bottles strewn all round, clothes in all processes of removal – one sleeve up, one sleeve halfway through. She spends a considerable half hour getting it all in its rightful place. The disorder causing her grumbling more than the work.

Scene 2

Either lunch or dinner is done. All have praised her: “Oh such a lovely a meal!” and are back on their cellphones or laptops or in front of the TV, lounging on the sofa. What greets her is a Mess!

The plates full of sticking dal, curry leaves, chillies, spice leftovers, in case of non-veg… bones of chicken and fish. She has to gather it, put it all in the garbage, hand the utensils over to the househelp, clear the kitchen platform…if God forbid the househelp has an off, she has to double in as the clean-up woman!

Even while one meal is reaching its culmination she needs to prepare her next meal, at least in her mind! If you valued her, would you not or could you not at least throw your own leftovers in the bin yourself? Could you not divide the post meal clean up like picking the dishes, leftovers and cleaning the table with her. She will feel less flustered and resentful.

Don’t you stay in the home too?

Why is it that it is her duty to think of “What to make?” Do you not eat too? Is that not your house? This is a general query to the males and progeny in general and en masse !

Why not teach and learn to come back home and keep your belongings in their rightful place? Why does mother have to discover the stinky tiffins and socks and yell?

Why not teach and learn to extend a hand while she cooks – maybe cut vegetables, fill water bottles, lay the table. You can think of ways to sort out her chaotic daily grind.

“Is there anything I can do here?”

She is your Homemaker. Your wife or your mom. A day’s rest from all activities and for all is a great idea but to overwork her and be magnanimous to ‘let her rest’ to me again is a misogynist and misplaced patriarchal ‘benevolence’.

If we learn to share work and if each of us contributes to running a smooth household, we will have a less resentful mum and wife and the other roles she plays!

Food, sleep and rest are required in regular doses and measures. By her too, not just by others.

Let us learn to value her everyday. For six days, we behave as if its beneath us to pick the mop or keep the socks in the washing machine and on Sunday, we transform into kinder beings. Let us be kind daily – look around for those moments where we can ask and implement “Is there something I can do?”

Let us observe and fill in her resentful moments with effective sharing and demonstrate caring every single moment and not just on a Sunday.

I as a mum and wife deserve Consideration each day. Sunday kindness will be an added bonus!